http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hea ... 07312.html

June 20, 2007, 11:31PM
Chertoff criticizes latest immigration amendment
It would ease rule making employers ensure they hire only legal workers

WASHINGTON — As the controversial immigration overhaul heads back to the Senate floor, the Bush administration is raising a red flag about efforts to make the bill's enforcement linchpin less burdensome for employers.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff strongly has urged senators to reject an amendment that would ease the requirement that employers ensure they are hiring only legal workers. Jobs in the U.S. are the chief magnet that has drawn an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

The amendment, by GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Barack Obama of Illinois, would be "a serious step backward in our enforcement effort," Chertoff wrote in a letter to the immigration deal's top architects.

The amendment, he added, "unfortunately fuels public skepticism about whether enforcement will work or political forces will frustrate serious efforts to bring employers into compliance with the law."


Privacy, error concerns
The three senators rejected Chertoff's accusations as "erroneous and misleading."

"We strongly support creating an effective, mandatory employment verification system for all employers to verify the legal status of their workers," the trio wrote. "But the design, implementation and oversight of the system as proposed in the pending immigration bill are flawed in several respects."

The deal negotiated by about a dozen senators, from both parties with input from Chertoff, would require the nation's

7 million employers to verify the identity of all 143 million U.S. workers by matching identity documents against an electronic government database.

But employers, labor unions and privacy advocates alike are battling such a requirement in part because the electronic employment verification system would be based on an error-prone database that some employers already are using voluntarily. Critics fear employers and workers could be ensnared by a flawed system — with serious consequences for both.

"We don't think it's going to work," said Mike Aitken, director of governmental affairs for the Society for Human Resources Management.

The mandate "is going to touch every employer and every employee in the United States," he said. "This is a significant impact on the work force, and I'm not sure folks are really looking at what the pros and cons are."


'Business as usual'
Instead of checking all U.S. workers within a three-year period, the amendment would require employers to check only new hires or in cases where document fraud is suspected — a goal Aitken's group supports.

Chertoff also bristled at the amendment's proposed five-year limitation on allowing the Department of Homeland Security to use Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service databases to ferret out illegal workers.

Such a plan "tells unscrupulous employers that, after five years, when the government agencies stop talking to each other, they can return to business as usual, employing unauthorized workers," he wrote.

The senators countered that the use of the federal data for immigration enforcement purposes is "highly suspect." Rogue employers, they argue, would go underground and stop filing federal tax withholding forms for illegal workers.

Chertoff spokesman Russ Knocke declined to say whether the administration would pull its support for the immigration overhaul if the verification standards are weakened.